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A PSA from Your Layout Artist at Large

Dear copywriters, marketers, press release composers, and random bosses who are in charge of producing content for promotional materials: please note the simple guidelines posted below. This is an addition to the official 2000-2006 guidelines in Binders 1-40, inclusive. We urge you to follow them as part of our 2007 campaign to reduce the incidence of ruler-tossing, head-keyboard collisions, snark-stiflement related ulcers, and mockery sprains running rampant among the layout artist/graphic design/peon community. Thank you so much for your cooperation with Project Please for the Love of God Just Stop That Already.

1. Exclamation points at the end of each sentence have the exact same effect as no exclamation points at all.* No, really. You see, exclamation points are used for emphasis, and emphasis only works adjacent to non-emphasis. Like how you can only appreciate good in the face of evil, understand "dry" if you've gotten wet, enjoy warmth if you are occasionally cold. Emphasizing every single last thing in a two-page document just makes the reader tired and jaded. Though your every sentence is no doubt a jewel, it's time to get tough. Pick the highlights, leave the rest.
*Note: except for the additional, rarely positive, effect of making all your copy sound like it is being read by a 13-year-old who just bought her dress for Formal.

2. Certain words, when used in promotional copy, have the disconcerting ability to take on the exact opposite of their dictionary meanings. This happens for two main reasons:
a) Thoughtless overuse, as in the case of words like "exciting" and "unique." Everyone's everything is exciting and unique. Try harder.
b) Guilt by association. The average reader has learned by painful experience that products labeled "whimsical" by their pushers are most often trite and banal; "dreamy" anything will leave them thrashing in the grip of nightmare; and let's not even talk about "jazzy." While your things or events may actually be whimsical, dreamy, and/or jazzy, please don't saddle them with these warped appellations.

3. Take Coco's advice. She asked that women look in the mirror before leaving and remove one accessory; think of words as accessories and instead of one, cut half. The precious droplets of your creative drive will have little effect in five-point type. Besides, do you know how many people actually read postcards, pamphlets, invitations, brochures or even exit signs? If you took calls all day with questions from people who have the answers written on the same pieces of paper they got the number from, you might be less enthusiastic about all that verbosity.

4. Quotation marks, italics, and capital letters: do not go where you appear to think they go. Perhaps you skipped over this part in school because you were focusing on beefing up the vocab with whimsicals, dreamies and jazzies. Don't be ashamed. Just hire a copy editor, or find someone on your staff who knows this crap, and then let them do their thing. Really. It will all make much more sense in the end.

5. The job of writing copy and the job of layout are two discrete tasks. Here are some signs that you have crossed over from the former to the latter:
a) You are spending more time selecting colors and fonts for your copy (which will, by the way, be printed in black, with a maximum of two typefaces) than composing it.
b) You are using the Insert Picture function in Word. Trust us, if someone else is designing your document, you never ever ever need to do this.
c) Your copy contains stage directions, like "(In upper left-hand corner:)" or "(under artwork image; small text.)" We can probably figure out where the return address goes, thanks.

6. When you are given something and asked to proofread it, please actually read it instead of glancing at it for one tenth of one second and shoving it back at the giver with a "great. Did we get the quote from the printer yet?" Either that, or work on your penmanship, or refrain from crying to us when the band's name is spelled wrong. Your choice.

Thank you for taking the time to read and apply these guidelines. We do so look forward to working with you in the future. It should be whimsical!

Posted by hilatron at March 12, 2007 10:23 AM | TrackBack